Eweek is reporting that the FBI is threatening Wikipedia with prosecution over its apparent illegal use of the FBI seal. In fact, the FBI believes that Wikipedia’s current use of the image violates U.S. law. According to the federal law enforcement agency, the use of the seal is permitted only by the FBI director.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, was notified of its alleged illegal use of the FBI seal through a July 28th letter by FBI Deputy Director David Larson. The letter gave Wikipedia 14 days from the receipt of the letter to remove the image of the seal from the website. Larson’s letter drew a quick response by Wikimedia’s General Counsel Mike Godwin in a July 30th letter who pointed out the seal is already widely used online including the Encyclopedia Britannica website. Larson went on to say in the letter that since Wikipedia doesn’t use the seal to deceive others or to portray itself as an agency of the FBI it was within its rights to display the seal.

Is anyone else taken aback by the notion that a FBI Deputy Director has time to write a letter to a website to tell it to quit displaying the FBI seal? It’s pretty disturbing to me to think that the agency has that as a focus right now. If this was a letter to some website which was engaged in other illegal activities I would understand. Clearly, there has to be more to this story.

The only thing I can come up with is that the seal is being used by others illegally and they are using Wikipedia as a source to obtain the image. Since it is more difficult to go after a number of people the FBI is trying to eliminate the problem at its source. Other than that I got nothing…